Olympic boycott threatened as Burma death toll climbs

Following a day in which at least nine people were killed, hundreds of monks were arrested, indiscriminate beatings administered to protesters and automatic weapons were fired into crowds, the deputy foreign minister of the junta told foreign diplomats summoned to its new jungle capital, Naypyidaw that "the government is committed to showing restraint in its response to the provocations".

A Japanese Embassy official in Burma said that a Japanese national, identified as Kenji Nagai, 50, who was covering the protests in Rangoon for a Japanese video news agency, APF News, was among those killed.

Masahiko Komura, Japan's foreign minister, told reporters in Washington his country holds Burma accountable for Mr Nagai's death, while the chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, said Tokyo will lodge a protest with the junta.

"Today, when security forces tried to disperse rioters, they clashed with them," Ye Htut, a Burmese government spokesman said in an e-mail statement. "During these attacks, nine people died and 11 people (were) wounded. Also, 31 security forces were wounded."

Witnesses and a Western diplomat said that dozens of people were arrested and badly beaten after soldiers fired into a crowd in Rangoon. Troops in at least four locations fired into the crowds after several thousand protesters ignored an order from security forces to disband, witnesses and diplomats said.

Soldiers shot three people dead in the city as crowds regrouped and taunted troops. The bodies were tossed in a ditch as troops chased fleeing people, beating anybody they could catch, witnesses said.

In other parts of the city, thousands of protesters fled after warning shots were fired into crowds that had swollen to 70,000. Bloody sandals were left lying in the road.

Protesters shouted at the soldiers, angry about early morning raids by security forces on Buddhist monasteries. Soldiers reportedly beat up and arrested more than 100 monks, who have spearheaded the largest challenge to the junta since a pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed in 1988.

"Give us freedom, give us freedom" some demonstrators shouted at the soldiers, who by mid-afternoon had fanned out across the streets of Rangoon.

Before dawn on Thursday, security forces raided several monasteries considered hotbeds of the pro-democracy movement.

A monk at Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery pointed to bloodstains on the concrete floor and said a number of monks were beaten and at least 100 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles. Shots were fired in the air and tear gas was used against a crowd of about 1,500 supporters of the monks during the chaotic raid, he said.

"Soldiers slammed the monastery gate with the car, breaking the lock and forcing it into the monastery," said a monk, who did not give his name for fear of reprisals. "They smashed the doors down, broke windows and furniture. When monks resisted, they shot at the monks and used tear gas and beat up the monks and dragged them into trucks."

Empty bullet casings, broken doors, furniture and glass peppered the bloodstained, concrete floor of the monastery.

In Mandalay, the country's second-largest city, about 400 miles north of Rangoon, five army lorries with soldiers and three fire engines were seen driving into the Mahamuni Pagoda, where hundreds of monks were locked inside by security forces.

Another 60 soldiers blocked the road to the pagoda from the centre of the city.

Led by thousands of monks in maroon robes, protesters have been demanding more democratic freedoms, the release of political activists and economic reforms in the impoverished nation. The protests, which began on 19 August, were initially sparked by high fuel prices but have been swelled by pent-up opposition to 45 years of harsh military rule in the impoverished nation of 56 million.

Yesterday, while carrying a front page on the sighting of the full moon in Burma, the New Light Of Myanmar newspaper - the junta's mouthpiece - blamed "saboteurs inside and outside" for causing the protests in Rangoon, and said the demonstrations were much smaller than the foreign media, responsible for a "skyful of lies" were reporting.

"Saboteurs from inside and outside the nation and some foreign radio stations, who are jealous of national peace and development, have been making instigative acts through lies to cause internal instability and civil commotion," it said.

Meanwhile, security forces arrested Myint Thein, a spokesman for the political party of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, family members confirmed.

For the first time yesterday, China publicly called for restraint in Burma but Edward McMillan-Scott, the vice president of the European Parliament, said European Union countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless China intervenes in Burma.

The British Conservative MEP is backed by the assembly's largest political group - the centre-right European People's Party, which includes the governing parties of France and Germany - and the Liberal grouping within the EU legislature.

"The consensus around the European Parliament is that China is the key. China is the puppet master of Burma," Mr McMillan-Scott said.

"The Olympics is the only real lever we have to make China act.

"The civilised world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable."

"This religious mass movement is finding echoes all over Asia including China, Korea and Tibet. They are filling a political vacuum. You cannot kill faith. If you try, it will kill you," said Mr McMillan-Scott, who has just returned from a tour of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Beijing has a deep investment in Burma, with concerns about trade, border stability and fighting drugs magnified by plans to build oil and gas pipelines through Burma's ethnically mixed border regions into China.

South east Asian nations last night expressed "revulsion" to Burma's foreign minister at the violent repression of demonstrations and strongly urged the military government "to exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution."

A statement issued after a foreign ministers meeting of the Association of South-east Asian Nations said the ministers "were appalled to receive reports of automatic weapons being used and demanded that the Burma government immediately desist from the use of violence against demonstrators."

Fate of democracy movement leader still a mystery

AS PROTESTERS were attacked in the streets of Rangoon yesterday, the fate and whereabouts of their political figurehead, Aung San Suu Kyi, were still unknown.

Earlier rumours that the Nobel peace prize-winner had been taken from her Yangon residence, where she has been held under house arrest for much of the past 18 years, to the notorious Insein prison, seemed to have been unfounded.

However, while the military may not have taken her to jail, the leader of the National League for Democracy remains effectively silenced.

An Asian diplomat said the junta had deployed more security forces around Suu Kyi's house and on the road leading to it, and that more than 100 soldiers were now inside the compound.

But even without access to her supporters or the media, she remains a potent symbol for the protesters, as does her family. Her father, Aung Sang, negotiated Burma's independence from Britain in 1947 and was assassinated by his rivals in the same year.

Sixty years on, he is still revered by the general populace and, if anything, is held in even higher esteem than his daughter.

However, if, as a result of the current upheaval, the military junta is forced out of office and Burma is left effectively without a government, it is likely Suu Kyi will be called on to form any interim administration.

As it stands, her NLD party remains heavily restricted as a result of a government clampdown on its activities in 2004. Two years later, many members resigned from the NLD, citing harassment and pressure from the military.

CRAIG BROWN

Internet and guile stop army winning information war

DESPITE attempts by the Burmese military to muzzle press coverage, the internet, text messages and in some cases mobile phones have been vital in passing information to the outside world.

The military regime controls all internet use through two state-run providers and restricts web access with software that limits what can be viewed. Use of e-mail systems like Hotmail and Yahoo is banned, though Burmese people and expatriates alike have reported still being able to use Google's gmail service. Such is the severity of censorship that it is illegal to own an unregistered modem.

However, students are known to have used the network of internet cafes which exist in cities such as Rangoon to outwit the censors. They have used "proxy" websites - third party sites that cover the user's tracks - to send pictures and text. The video-sharing site YouTube has been used for grainy mobile phone footage while dissidents are understood to have sent messages via the networking service Facebook. Some have even enclosed accounts of the brutality in seemingly innocuous electronic greeting cards.

However, there were signs last night that the authorities were clamping down on the country's citizen journalists.

Soe Myint, editor-in-chief of the internet-based Mizzima news agency, said he had noticed the flow of e-mails from Burma slow from around 300 a day to about 50.

"The regime is very clever," he said.

"They are not closing the whole system - their own supporters need access to the outside - but they are selectively cutting phones and internet access."

Foreign visitors to Burma face equally strict control on their use of technology. Visitors are allowed to bring one laptop computer per person into the country but must declare it on arrival. Limited e-mail service is available at some hotel chains but all e-mails are read.

Visitors are often charged hefty fees if they try to send photos via e-mail. According to the US State Department, one visitor was given a bill for 987 after sending just one photo via a hotel's e-mail system.

News organisations like Democratic Voice of Burma, a radio and TV service based in Oslo, have become a focal point for protesters smuggling words and images out of the country. Both it and the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders draw a difference between this week's protests and the last uprising in 1988 when reporting any detail proved difficult.

Vincent Brossel, director of the Asia desk for Reporters Without Borders, said: "This time, compared to 1988, there are lots of new technologies to get the news out of Burma ... People are able to take pictures, videos to evidence what is going on."

He added: "Technology is the most useful weapon you can use in such pacifist struggles."